Top Ten Things I Accomplished While Contributing to Jalopnik

Admittedly, most of the coverage I produced was self-centered, egotistical and extremely self congratulatory (a lot like this very post). However, that sort of accidentally happened. The original idea was to bring coverage of amateur motorsports events to Jalopnik. The plan was for it to be real, in-depth coverage, where the rubber actually meets the road. To do this my friends and I would run anything anywhere, see where we finished and I would chronicle our adventures on the site for like minded gearheads to enjoy. That meant being at the tracks and actually competing in the events. Unfortunately, sometimes it meant beating up my friends’ cars (sorry about that guys) because I didn’t own the right type of vehicle for a certain race. One particular borrowed ride was an Infiniti FX 45 that we used at a Rallycross, which, rumor has it, will never be the same. Good thing it was a lease.

Some of the “live” coverage of these events I tried to do wasn’t very “live” at all. This was due to the fact that I bit off a little more than I could chew. With towing cars to race tracks, organizing the crew, setting up the car, learning a new track, attending drivers’ meetings, fixing crash damage, and most importantly, drinking beer, I often didn’t have the few moments I needed to sit behind my computer, highjack some wifi, find a picture that wasn’t completely blurry and quickly put up a post on Jalopnik. Trying to put up the stories quickly resulted in grammatical errors and sometimes stories with major details missing. Most of the time, I just didn’t have enough time. Winning the race was the priority. The blogging would have to wait.

Eventually the race would be over, and if everything went right for my team, we won. Trophies were handed out and victory beers were consumed. After the celebration (and inebriation) I would sit down in the motor home, totally stoked on our recent accomplishment and try to think of something to put up as a post. Feeling good in the moment, inevitably those stories said something like, “Krider Racing is the shiznit!”

After a year of this, many checkered flags were waved, tons of tires were destroyed, and over half a million hits were accounted for on Jalopnik. Those half a million hits included nearly 5,000 comments, with 10 percent of those containing narratives of people calling me a “self-centered, big headed, douche bag.” A comment I can’t really argue with. So, to keep the ball rolling, and so as not to disappoint, here are the Top 10 Things I Accomplished While Contributing to Jalopnik. Get those particular keys on your keyboard ready for the comments section: D-O-U-C-H-E-B-A-G!

NUMBER 10

10. Took a Volkswagen Bug and ran it flat out in the Beetleball Endurance Rally Series from The Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, across the desert, touched Arizona, over the Hoover Dam and onto the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada.

The Beetleball would be one of those totally illegal open road races if a VW could actually go fast enough to break the law. Using an air card, I actually covered the rally live while we were racing in the event. My brother still hasn’t forgiven me, because we missed a freeway exit on the route while I was busy trying to get this photo (below) instead of reading the route instructions. “Dammit! Stop blogging for Jalopnik and pay attention!” Even with my poor navigation skills, we somehow won our class anyway. Most importantly, we had an awesome time hanging out with a great group of VW fanatics.

9. Won Episode One of the show The Forum Wars and set the fastest overall time for the entire first season of the show.

The show was set up to put internet forum nerds on a track and see if anything these guys typed on the keyboard could be backed up by their right foot (spoiler alert –in most cases it wasn’t). The idea was to take two cars (comparatively modified) and two fanboys and have them run head to head in a drag race and a road course shootout. The results of the rivalries were supposed to silence the outrageous performance and driving claims of the losing side. Instead, the feuds actually just started a barn fire of excuses and accusations. Namely one being the fact that I borrowed Steve Kuhtz’s Mustang and ran D.O.T. Hoosier autocross tires, thus giving me quite the unfair advantage -which it absolutely did. The rules for the event said any D.O.T. tire. I chose Hoosier autocross tires while the 350Z I ran against in Episode 1 chose Toyo road race tires. A bunch of other competitors chose stock Goodyears (wrong choice). The rest is history.

8. Took a rental car to Sacramento Raceway for some Wednesday night E.T. Bracket Drag Racing and won the event.

I was in Sacramento on a business trip and I knew they had a local drag strip somewhere outside of town. I picked up a rental car at the airport and headed to the track thinking I could get a few cool pictures for a possible future post on Jalopnik. Since I was there anyway I figured I’d enter the race. Why not? It wasn’t my car. I won my first round and ended up moving through the brackets race after race. Next thing I knew I was in the final and won the Street Machine class. I came home from my business trip with a trophy. My wife asked, “How the hell did you do that? You didn’t even have a car with you?”“Honey, I’ve told you time and time again, Krider Racing is the shiznit!”

7. Set the fastest time during the Targa Trophy Bay Area Rallyfest against Ferraris and Lamborghinis in a borrowed press fleet 2011 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500.

The idea of the rally was to run a bunch of high end cars along a scenic route and end up back at a fancy hotel for an epic after party. During the event accrued mileage and average times would be used to score the cars to determine an overall winner based on an unknown target time and unknown target mileage. It all sounded a bit confusing, although mostly reasonable during the drivers’ meeting. Everything was looking good/legal/safe until I bumped into an extremely well to do Lamborghini owner who told me, “I don’t give a crap about the mileage and the time; I’m going to be the first one to the finish.” I don’t know why, but at that moment I decided he couldn’t be the first one to the finish line in his Italian supercar, because I was going to already be there in a stock American made Mustang. Six hours later, a few traffic laws shattered and way before the actual target time, the Lamborghini sped into the hotel parking lot in San Francisco searching for glory. My brother and I were already at the bar celebrating our victory over the Lambo and thus, coincidentally, our Targa Trophy loss.

In the coverage on Jalopnik I foolishly made a smartass comment about some of the “hippie bicyclists” we sped by on some of the mountain roads along the route. In doing so, I angered an enormous contingent of militant “share the road” bicyclists that comment on this site. Sorry about that boys, just trying to be funny. Bikes are cool too. I just think they would be cooler if they had four wheels instead of two and an engine, but, hey, that’s just my opinion.

6. Was named “Hoon of the Day” by the editors of Hooniverse for a video of me drifting a 2001 Bullitt Mustang at an SCCA National Tour solo event.

I get a lot of questions about the video of the Bullitt Mustang “drifting” around the autocross course. “Isn’t stick faster than grip?”“Why would you drift at an autocross event?”“You’re not a REAL drifter!” The actual reason behind the Bullitt sliding all over the course isn’t all that sexy. The fact was, by the last run of the day, I had completely corded the left rear tire. I didn’t have a backup tire and there was no time to get one. I needed to put one more fast lap down without hitting any cones in order to win the event. I crossed my fingers, hoping the tire would hold together, and headed out on course. I kept my right foot planted to the floor and did my best to squeeze the Mustang between the narrow orange cones while dealing with nearly zero grip at the left rear corner. Somehow (luck mostly) I was able to avoid every cone on course (barely) and win the event. The following video was the result.

My team won the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Altamont. In doing so, I set the fastest lap of the race, thus getting the attention of Jay Lamm, the head perpetrator of the event (it wasn’t the type of attention you want at LeMons). At the next LeMons event my team entered we were slapped with a 1,500 lap penalty for racing at LeMons I mean cheating. Our car had some parts that may or may not have added up to $500 or was it $5,000? I don’t remember, who’s counting? Oh, that’s right, Jay Lamm is counting. For the next event Murilee Martin invited me to be a guest judge and help catch all the rest of the cheaters. This was a lot of fun. The best part was hanging out with Jalopnik writers Murilee Martin (now at The Truth About Cars) and Jonny Lieberman (now at MotorTrend). Some fool let us blogger/judges (which included Autoblog editor Damon Lavrinc) cruise in this cool WWII Jeep complete with machine gun. Nobody gave us any lip.

It took five tries for our team to win a ChumpCar event. We had a second and a third at Infineon, eighth at the 24 hour event at Willow Springs (blown head gasket -excuses, excuses), and a second place on the first day of the California Speedway race. We were starting to think we were in some sort of second place rut. Finally, after never quitting, luck fell on our side and we got to sip the sweet taste of victory again. All of the ChumpCar races we ran were a blast and you really can’t beat the racing bang for your buck (and there will be some banging –look at the damage to our Big Sausage Pizza Delivery Machine).

3. Won the 2010 E3 Western Endurance Racing Championship and “Survived The 25” while covering the series for the National Auto Sport Association (NASA).

I teamed up with Keith Kramer and ran the entire 2010 season of NASA’s Western Endurance Racing Championship (WERC). The racing in this series was incredibly competitive. I learned a ton about night racing, fast driver swaps and strategic pit stops. The multi-class, long race formats of the WERC series were physically demanding and mentally tiresome. Most notably was the year end finale at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, the world’s longest closed course road race. While competing against pro factory efforts from Honda and Mazda we were hit by faster class cars twice and had to do major repairs to our car in order to finish the event. Even with all of that drama during The 25, we still won the 2010 Championship. It was the hardest race I had ever entered. Looking back on it, I realize now it was the greatest race I have ever been a part of.

2. Took a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba (yes, complete with Corinthian leather) and destroyed it in a demolition derby, winning a heat at the California State Championships.

I had been watching demolition/destruction/crash-up derbys at the local fairgrounds since I was in diapers riding a big wheel up and down my street. No matter how many races we did, I kept telling my friends, “We haven’t done squat until we’ve done a demolition derby!” We picked up a ’76 Cordoba (the two-door sportscar of destruction derby) busted the windows out of it and welded on it for weeks. We towed it up to the State Championships (yes, they actually do have a state championship for bashing cars into each other). I drove the car like my body wasn’t in it (my neck has never been the same since) and when the horn blew we won our heat and ended the life of a gas guzzling Chrysler.

Racing at any level is a team sport. The grassroots success that Krider Racing has accomplished had nothing to do with fearless driving, because it was accomplished solely by the hard work and commitment of my friends and family. And the best part is we have a blast doing it together (except for the times when we want to kill each other). Sometimes competition brings the extreme aggressive parts out of all of us, and from that, the stress level at races can get pretty high. But once it’s over, we call each other (sometimes it takes a week) and start plotting the next event we should take on. Collectively we always want to win, no matter what the event is, even if it is just tossing around go-karts at the local putt-putt mini-golf course.

Since my friends and I ended up running all sorts of different races, I decided to put together a series of informative “how-to” stories on different grassroots automotive shenanigans -the kind of events that anyone could get involved in if they had a few bucks, a car, and a crash helmet.

Below are links to the different topics (listed alphabetically) that we experienced and I covered in the Racer Boy blog at Speed:Sport:Life (from road racing to the pinewood derby and everything in-between).

Each article has the Racer Boy gauge which gives details on how much it costs to run the event, how much time it takes, car wear, how dangerous the sport is, and the expected adrenaline level. Plus, each article has links to different sanctioning bodies to help find the event nearest you.

GRACIAS

With 2010 coming to an end I want to thank all of the photographers that I came in contact with and stole images from for unpaid use on the site (the photographs were generally far better than the words I mistyped underneath them). I want to thank all of the event promoters for putting on these cool races that my friends and I had the opportunity to enjoy and play in. Thanks to Jalopnik for allowing me to be a complete egomaniac on the site. Thanks to my sponsors for continued support in helping us go fast and win. And thank you to all of the different people I’ve met and raced hard against at various tracks and venues. It’s been a great ride. Till next time, I’ll see you at the finish line.